We’re in the middle or is it the end of web 2.0. We went from push to pull, from lean back to lean forward and now we’re all ‘engaged’ to the content, to the author, to the constant stream feeding our insatiable appetite, few of which we actually find the time to read, to really read, as opposed to the usual skimming. If you’ve already read this far into the article then, thanks, for those that didn’t, well, nothing new there.

So, why get rid of social media buttons? A few reasons spring to mind, aesthetics of this site for one. I’m yet to work out a way to make the buttons fit with the general design of the site (wholly due to my lack of css knowledge), however this is not just related to this site but now hundreds of thousand site if not millions or even billions; there are plenty of voices out there who proclaim this unsightly of unsightlies.

Is that reason to capitulate to a minority of hardcore haters, perhaps not; for haters have their adversaries and these lovers/evangelist come in equal measures, with equally convincing ziel. What about the middle earthlings those that semi understand what these buttons do, the benefits for the users and site involved, versus the perceived trade-off of privacy. That is of course if the average user is equipped to understand privacy, or whether they even care. I often feel the jury is out on the caring side, as it is often a loaded question, absorbing the freedom of the internet, the ability of users to consume ad funded content, which otherwise wouldn’t be there, the reason why facebook and google are ‘free’ to use. I’ve written more about google ‘caring about us‘ and why you should ‘log out of facebook for more privacy‘.

More recently “frictionless” sharing, that is say, sharing is turned on with the empathise on active ‘un-sharing’ is slowly making its way into our daily lives. This will be the first flaps of the wings of a butterfly. Either it will draw us in and capture our reading habits for a digital revolution which will bounce us around a never ending machined learned, friends recommended and most probably predicted merry-go-round, which we’ll never want to get off. Or we’ll be more creeped out and overladed than we are by those ads that seemly know you are in the market for a sofa and thus follow you until submission, and even then they don’t leave you.

Love or hate ‘frictionless’ sharing it’s already upon us, Josh Constine writes on techcrunch “together we can bring a golden age“, dreamy! Whereas, Molly Wood wites in cnet for us to keep clear, with facebook ‘ruining sharing‘.

Whatever the case, I’m losing the ubiquitous share buttons, safe in the knowledge that those would want to share will do so by the age old method of copy and paste. I’ll be watching to see if any the effect on traffic and report with an update in the new year. I’ll even throw in a post in the next week or so with what scripts are in uberBusy that may or may not be tracking you.

I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts in the comments below. Do you use share buttons? How do you feel about sharing becoming passive? Oh and feel free to share this, I’m sure you’ll find away if you wish.